A Stitch in Haste

Think the mindset of Venezuela's socialist dictator is an anomaly?

Some Seattle school children are being told to be skeptical of private property rights. This lesson is being taught by banning Legos.
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According to the teachers, "Our intention was to promote a contrasting set of values: collectivity, collaboration, resource-sharing, and full democratic participation."

The children were allegedly incorporating into Legotown "their assumptions about ownership and the social power it conveys." These assumptions "mirrored those of a class-based, capitalist society — a society that we teachers believe to be unjust and oppressive."
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At the end of that time, Legos returned to the classroom after the children agreed to several guiding principles framed by the teachers, including that "All structures are public structures" and "All structures will be standard sizes."

I can just imagine the conversation the next day between the bully and the scrawny kid:

"Your lunch money is oppressive and class-based. So give it to me."

"Perhaps — let's collaborate with the rest of the class and engage in full democratic participation!"

Of course, given that no students ever really owned the Legos in the first place, it's trivial for a collectivist-minded teacher to "convince" the youngsters that — voilà! — they don't really own the Legos ... and therefore should not really own anything else either. I wonder if the teachers extended the discussion to, e.g., the children's toys, or clothes, or pets. Try getting the kids to be "skeptical of property rights" in those contexts.

Too bad also that the original "class-based, capitalist" Legotown was not used to illustrate the concepts of, say, zoning laws, property taxes, or eminent domain — all of which are quite instructive examples of "collectivity, collaboration, resource-sharing, and full democratic participation."

Note also that the "guiding principles" were "framed by the teachers." Blind submission to authority never seems to escape the curriculum, does it?

Or maybe they could just go on a field trip to Venezuela.

(Via Distributed Intelligence. More thoughts at Cato@Liberty.)

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POST SCRIPT: The issue of the magazine, Rethinking Schools, that first documented the Lego ban also ran the following articles --

• Investigating Slavery in New York City
• Algebra Students Look at Peak Oil
• Teachers in Mexico Face Oppression and Violence

Nope, no bias or agenda there.

(And for those who don't understand the title.)